In the search marketing field, keyword research is one of the most important and valuable activity. Through the process of digging into your market’s keyword demand, you can learn more about your customers’ intent and needs. Knowing which exact terms and phrases you need to target for an SEO campaign is the key to success online. Keyword research is the foundation of a successful SEO campaign; it requires research and analysis, in other words you have to understand how people search for the services and products you offer to be able to speak their language.

Understanding the searcher intent

Every search query has a motivation behind, segmenting the searcher’s intent gives you a better perspective on which keywords to target depending on your business.
It is generally accepted that there are three types of search queries:

• 1. Navigational
• 2. Informational
• 3. Transactional

Navigational queries are made with the intention to go directly to a specific website or resource. The user will type the domain name, the brand name, a company, or an organization.

EX: Yellow Pages, Expedia, Amazon, United Nations.

Informational queries are used by users while trying to learn about something or need information about a topic. They will use query triggers like `how to…` `what is…`

EX: How to repair a laptop, what is the capital of France, who is Fidel Castro

Transactional queries are about searchers who want to take a specific action, purchasing an item or registering to a service. These queries can be split into 2 categories, commercial investigation and buying mode.

Commercial Investigation queries can be defined as comparison and review modes. They use query triggers like ‘best ‘ `recommended ` ‘review’ ‘rated’

EX: best laptop, top rated smart phones, smart phone comparison, best dating sites

Buying queries are used by surfers who know exactly what they want . They use query triggers like ‘cheap’ ‘discount’ ‘price’ ‘buy’

EX: cheap laptops, HDTVs on sale, discount flights

Build your keyword list around searcher’s intent; it will help you building targeted web pages with better call to action and click-through rates, leading to higher conversion rates.
Understanding the long tail

most search marketers are chasing head keywords, the very popular ones with large volume of searchers. When this strategy may be good, it still missing on a huge volume of traffic from the invisible long tail.

“At Google’s Universal Search announcement, Udi Manber put up a slide stating that 20% to 25% of the search queries Google sees every day are search queries it has never seen before. “

Capturing searches within the long tail has become an obligation in today’s competitive market. The long tail queries may have a very low volume of search but the number of queries largely compensates this weakness.

How to tap into the long tail?
Since you’re targeting queries that have never been used in the past, you will need to take a proactive approach by adding more contextual content using your keyword research. Identifying the patterns into your niche is essential, what content your users are looking for? Use Google trends and social media tools for more ideas. Use your analytics data and PPC data if available to dig deeper.

Build your website content around these themes; define a content strategy for your blog using trend previsions.

Understanding the keyword difficulty
It is all about picking keyword fights you can win, it is essential to understand the work required in order to achieve top ranking. Some keywords may need months or years of work before attaining the top 10, especially when building a brand new site. Analyzing keywords difficulty and making the right choices can make an SEO campaign success or fail.

There were a lot of great articles out there last month. Two weeks ago we shared a post regarding useful SEO blog posts, but we felt like we’re missing on a lot of good content so here’s the Internet Marketing round up for July 2010.

Link building

4 ways to use Twitter for link building: find new link building opportunities with social media

Link building strategy phase one: How to save time and build links with little effort

A BlueGlass conference in LA on how to measure and attain links with major industry speakers like Rand Fishkin & Dave Snyder

Great link baiting sites and how they proceed to attract links on a regular basis

Keyword Research

Capitalize on the long tail: Keyword research optimization for existing content to leverage the missing long tail opportunities.

SEO

How SEOs can destroy the information architecture of a website: Why information architects knows more about the user’s intent.

A 2010 portrait of SEOs: Probably the funniest Seo article so far this year

SEOs the villains and why we hate them

Site Speed for SEO: The correlation between site speed and pages crawled by Google

How Web design and SEOs are merging: Examples of great web designs that help increasing organic traffic opportunities.

Another session from BlueGlass reported on BruceClay’s blog: Learn how to not fail at getting organic traffic from search engines.

Paid Search

A very interesting forum post on Webmasterworld about Quality score VS quality of traffic

How to use Ad sitelinks to maximize conversion rates by getting more control on your CTR and landing pages.

Automated PPC Bid Management? A good overview on what the industry is really offering now

Web analytics

Another great article by Avinash: Which data to analyze to make analytic reports more clear and useful.

How to use Google Analytics to redesign a website: Why our web analytic data is important to make effective marketing decisions.

Mobile Search

The mobile search landscape: Why you need to take this field seriously

A video interview featuring the director of engagement strategy for 1000heads: the evolution of Mobile Ecommerce.

To generate ad revenues from their web properties, publishers (website owners) have the choice between wide varieties of Ad Networks since the 90s. Recently, Ad exchanges are becoming the emerging channel for publisher to sell their inventory while constantly increasing revenues.

First, what’s an Ad Network?

Ad networks appeared to solve a problem for advertisers wanting to reach a large audience like they use to do on traditional media: TV, newspaper etc…
Since the internet audience is fragmented on different websites, Ad networks start managing Ad spots on multiple websites and offered this audience to large brands. It’s a win-win situation for both, giving the ability to advertisers to reach large internet audiences and publishers to ability to sell more inventories.

The majority of Ad networks work like the following:

1.    Forecast the inventory available to sell on their publishers properties
2.    Make deals with advertisers to sell the inventory
3.    Deliver the sold inventory

Examples of Ad networks:

•    Google Adsense
•    Yahoo publisher network
•    AOL Advertising
•    24/7 Real media

Ok then what about Ad exchanges?

Ad exchanges are an auction marketplace where each impression (banner /creative impression) is auctioned in “real time” between multiple advertisers. They provide advertisers with a high level of Data about the visitor and the web page the Ad spot is auctioned, enabling the advertiser to modify/manage his strategy in real time.

Instead of selling the whole inventory of a website in advanced, by forecasting the needs and ending up with un-sold or oversold inventories, Real time ad exchanges optimize the operations for both, publishers and advertisers while maximizing the profits and revenues.

When advertisers bid for an impression, they usually base it on 3 levels:

1. •    The visitor: Behavioral and demographic of the user
2. •    The Ad spot context: the subject of the web page
3. •    The creative: the size of the ad, rich media etc..

The auction process is done in milliseconds.

Examples of Ad networks:

•    Double Click
•    OpenX Market
•    Yahoo Right Media

Definitely, Ad Exchanges are a new opportunity for publishers to achieve higher revenues per CPM.

Some website owners feel that they cannot compete with the larger websites out there. This is simply untrue. Those who utilize the right SEO methods have every bit as good a chance for ranking on their given keywords as any other website. Since that is the case, we have compiled three effective SEO techniques that can and should be used for any website.

• 1.  Set Your Title Tags

Did you know that each page on your website has a space for descriptive title tags? The tags must be filled out with a brief description and a title in order for your site to reap the benefits of proper search engine optimization. These titles are found to be blue, bold and very distinct when searchers look for websites on search engines. The search engines construct the titles that come up with your brief description and link on search results from – you guessed it – the actual title tags on your pages that you set up.  So if you were trying to sell lakefront property Utah homes, you might want to put the term, ‘lakefront property Utah homes’ as a title tag for your main page. Typically, people put their main keywords as their title tags on various pages in order to receive optimal SEO value.

• 2.  Online Press Release

Why would anyone want to send out a press release? Well, basically you’ll be spreading the word. Every blogger, journalist and other type of website owner is constantly looking for new information online. So give it to them! It’s a great way to spread your presence online, to promote your products and to build backlinks to your website. Backlinks are an essential part of SEO, which means that online press releases should absolutely be incorporated into your SEO strategy. It’s simply a fantastic method for pulling in more targeted traffic to your website.

• 3.  Create a Blog

It’s been recently speculated that Google has changed their algorithms to place more emphasis on websites that have more content on them. Therefore, less is not more in this case. More is always better which means the more content you can put on your site, the better the chances it has of ranking. This can pose a problem for the smaller websites that are only promoting a handful of products. Since they won’t have pages and pages of products to list, instead they can add a blog to their website and have pages and pages of blog posts. This is a fantastic way to build up content on a website with rich (but not too rich) keyword density.

So there you have it. There are three SEO techniques that are effective, inexpensive and available to any website, regardless of their size or marketing budget. It doesn’t cost anything to set your title tags on your website’s pages. It also doesn’t take much effort to throw together an online press release about your company and products. Creating a blog will take some upkeep, but it is also free to maintain which leaves no excuse for not taking advantage of these three techniques. Put them to good use and watch your ratings rise.

Author: Ryan Chaffin

The way you present an item, be it on the web or in a restaurant, influences the item’s future adoption. Package design can be a very peculiar source of inspiration for web designers. Think about it. Package design deals with the relationship between a product and its consumers similarly to web design; the item’s characteristics, the environment it exists in, and the people exposed to it all interact on a subconsciously perpetual level. When you understand the way a package serves a purpose for its intended product, you can better understand the underlying purpose of a website’s design for its creator and his/her intentions. Packages are designed for a target audience the way websites are. The package speaks for and about the product it contains/displays the way a website puts its content out there in a very singular manner.

I have compiled a list of five very interesting package design related sites. I am not inferring that this is the best you will find out there since I have not seen it all. These are the best results I came across while researching.

• 1. LOVELY PACKAGE – lovelypackage.com
  

This is by far my favorite site! I frequent it as often as possible. Lovely Package features amazing package designs of products from around the world and provides brief descriptions of the designers and the package’s product. Sometimes, they fail to mention the package’s intended product which poses a problem especially when the writing on the package is in a foreign language and typography; it makes the package difficult to appreciate. They have daily additions, and keep previous ones, so for those who are new to the site, you will have hundreds of archival pages to explore. Every time I visit the site, I spend at least an hour going backwards because of the massive amount of posts that accumulate in little time.

• 2. THE DIELINE – thedieline.com
  

This site/blog provides a lot of goodies for package designers. Similarly to Lovely Package, the site features internationally innovative package designs. There is also a Directory with a useful list of package design companies, organized by country location. The Dieline also has an Awards page where the site administrators choose from package designs, and extol a select few. There is a very useful Jobs page that features an extensive list of package design jobs in North America (US/Canada). This site is quite a treat.

• 3. PACKAGE DESIGN MAGAZINE – packagedesignmag.com
  

This is perfect for those who are really into the business of package design and want to know the latest info about everything. Package Design Magazine Online is basically a hub for everything package design related. This site features articles about the Industry, design, companies, package material news, etc. The articles feature pictures related to the topics of discussion, for those of you simply looking for captivating visuals. Thankfully, the articles themselves are quite illuminating in terms of Industry trends, which can have overlapping resonance in web design trends. Their Calendar announces important package design-related events, conventions, and expos. There are podcasts and newsletters, but I must admit that I am not too fond of the site’s architecture; it could use some improving and reorganizing. This is a great site for practicing package designers and hopeful students.

• 4. DZINE – dzinebites.blogspot.com
  

I stumbled across this design blog that featured a list of cool package designs. It is a lot like Lovely Package, but of a smaller magnitude. On the right sidebar, there is an interesting list of design sites under the title ‘Inspirations.’ This means more sources to discover! I am sure there are dozens of other bloggers out there posting their favorite designs on their own personal blogs too. On DZINE I also came across another blog’s link [www.payal-shah.blogspot.com]. This blog also features pretty interesting designs and ads. I was impressed by a collection of ads, made for a clothing brand called Stori, which portrayed comic book superheroes as every-day men.

• 5. LOOKS GOOD – looks.gd
  

This is an online Design Magazine that provides resources and inspiration for designers of all types. It really is a delicious site! There are so many interesting posts to explore that feature original works in their designated fields (i.e. Advertising, Web Design, Typography, etc.). What more can I say? Go check it out for yourself!

DID I MISS SOMETHING?

I may not have mentioned some sites you may know and find important. I apologize for not knowing all the good ones, but that’s why the Comment section exists! Please share any other links you know and love so that we can all benefit from the gold mines.

By Marie-Ange Audigé

MORE LINKS

“100+ Minimal & Typographic Package Designs”

“Cool Packaging”

“25 Examples of Amazing Packaging Design”

“50+ Examples of Beautiful Packaging”

“Beautiful and Expensive Packaging Design”

A great site for Designers in general

Bittbox – A blog with a lot of useful material for designers

Design Muse – A package designer’s blog